Baltic Nations to Work Together on Infrastructure Projects?

Lithuania's Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius believes that the three former Soviet Baltic republics should coordinate their infrastructure development projects, telling reporters, "It is very good that electricity companies of countries in the region --Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania - are currently working very actively in the negotiations and discussions with Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, and we hope that draft concession contracts and shareholder contracts will be ready for approval by the end of December or the first days of January. The progress is considerable."

Kubilius was referring to the discussions between Baltic and Polish energy companies and the joint U.S.-Japanese Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy firm about the construction of a nuclear power plant in Visaginas, Lithuania.

According to Kubilius, contracts on the project could be ready as early as December or January 2012, the Baltijos Naujienos Akcijos news agency reported.

Kubilius, in Latvia weekend to attend an informal meeting of Baltic prime ministers, added, "The priority for us, the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), for the coming decade - after we became EU members and after we became NATO members - is to pool our efforts to develop the physical infrastructure, which would fortify the connections with the EU, I mean roads, railways, electricity and gas energy links, and we have an indeed very good basis of cooperation for this type of tasks."